The duke was dying at the time the last-mentioned bet was made! Fox and Fitzpatrick played cards on one occasion from 1.0 A.M. till 6.0 A.M., with a waiter standing by to tell the sleepy gamesters whose deal it was! But Fox (who perhaps does not properly belong to this period) was an inveterate gambler, and a very philosophical one. On one occasion he settled himself to sleep with his head on the hard table on which he had just lost a large fortune: on another, having lost his last shilling at faro, he was found the next morning reading Herodotus. Brooks, the owner of the club of the name in St. James's Street, made a lot of money out of these gamesters; but he was always ready to lend money to the losers, who were not always honest enough to repay him. Liberal Brooks, whose speculative skill Is hasty credit and a distant bill: Who, nursed in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade, He threatened over and over again to resign from the club because he could not get back the moneys he had lent, and finally he did so. He died a very poor man in 1782, and there is a tradition that, to evade the demands of his creditors at a time when corpses commanded a certain price on the market, his body was secretly buried at night in a small opening under the pavement of St. James's Street, close to the club which had borne his name. But to return to the ladies. Though not such high players as the men, a considerable part of the daily round of a lady of fashion was taken up with cards. In the early part of the century there had also been much gambling, and stakes had been fairly high, but the ladies, at any rate, did not turn night into day and they got to bed at a reasonable hour. "Clarinda ", who sent a portion of her diary to Mr. Spectator for publication, and who may be supposed to have flourished about the reign of good Queen Anne, accounts for her day as follows: Wednesday. From 8.0 till 10.0. Drank two dishes of chocolate in bed and fell asleep after them. From 10.0 till 11.0. Ate a slice of bread and butter, drank a dish of bohea and read the Spectator. From 11.0 till 1.0. At my toilette. Tried a new hood. Gave orders fer Veny to be combed and brushed. (MEM.-Look best in blue.) From 1.0 till half an hour after 2.0. Drove to the 'Change and cheapened a couple of fans. Till 4.0. At Dinner. (MEM.-Mr. Froth passed in his new liveries.) From 4.0 till 6.0. Dressed. Paid a visit to old Lady Blithe and her sister, having before heard they were gone out of Town that day. From 6.0 till 11.0. At Bassett. (MEM.-Never set again upon the ace of diamonds.) On another day Clarinda dawdles about at home all the morning, finally gets dressed by three, sees company from four to eleven and goes to bed at twelve. One day she shuts herself up for an hour to practise "Lady Betty Modley's Scuttle ", which is a pace of affected precipitation ". Another morning she occupied half an hour in shifting a patch about her cheek before settling to fix it above her left eyebrow. She was but one type of a lady of quality of the eighteenth century. My Lady Townshend and my Lady Harrington belonged to quite another. If, in addition to the amusements of a lady in those days, one wishes to know what they ate at dinner and other meals, one may turn to a letter written by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to her daughter the Countess of Bute in the year 1752, in which the elder lady, at that time living on the Continent, thus describes her daily food: I wake generally about seven, and drink half a pint of warm asses' milk after which I sleep two hours. As soon as I am risen, I constantly take three cups of milk coffee, and two hours after that a large cup of milk chocolate. Two hours more brings my dinner where I never fail swallowing a good dish (I don't mean plate) of gravy soup, with all the bread, roots, &c., belonging to it. I then eat a wing and the whole body of a large fat capon, and a veal sweetbread, concluding with a competent quantity of custard and some roasted chestnuts. At five in the afternoon I take another dose of asses' milk and for supper twelve chestnuts, which would weigh two of those in London, one new laid egg, and a handsome porringer of white bread and milk. Lady Mary was by way of being something of an invalid when she wrote that letter, but her digestion, at any rate, could not have been much impaired. But every one ate enormously in those days, and continued to do so right up to the middle of the nineteenth century. Here is the menu of a dinner in 1744 at Mrs. Delany's house in Dublin : Turkey Boiled Leg of Mutton Greens, &c. Venison Pastry Partridge Creamed Apple Tart Fricassee of Eggs Pigeons (No Dessert to be had) The apology for the absence of dessert has a humour all its own. There are one or two curious points as to the order in which the dishes were served-soup after turkey and mutton, followed directly by plum pudding, and the only kind of fish-crabs! The above menu is copied verbatim et literatim from the Memoirs of Mrs. Delany. Her letters to her sister abound in similar bills of fare of the same portentous kind. On one occasion she " 'picknicked" in Ireland off a “swilled mutton ", i.e. “ a sheep roasted whole in its skin scorched like a hog ". In this chapter I have tried to give some idea how persons of quality, such as were the modish crew to which Lady Townshend belonged, passed their time in the round of society in London. I will now endeavour to picture the life led in public by these frolicsome dames when they journeyed for their pleasures farther afield. E CHAPTER III DIVERSIONS OF PERSONS OF QUALITY IN LONDON OUT OF DOORS The Pleasure Gardens of London: the less fashionable resorts: Jenny Whim's: the Islington Spa: other Spas in Clerkenwell : the "Folly" on the Thames: Ranelagh: frequented by all classes of society: concerts and masquerades at Ranelagh: the great Regatta: the new Spring Garden at Vauxhall Lady Caroline Petersham's supper-party: Betty of the fruit shop: other Spring Gardens: turtle suppers: derivation of the name "Vauxhall ": affrays at Vauxhall: Marylebone Gardens : favourite resort of Macheath, and other highwaymen : Handel at Marylebone: the Spaniard's at Hampstead: a curious sauce. TO THE STUDENT of London life in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries few things are more astonishing than the number of out-of-the-way places of amusement and pleasure-gardens existing in those days, now entirely disappeared. In the never-ceasing expansion of London towards all points of the compass, and the enhancement of the value of town land for building purposes, trees have been remorselessly cut down, meadows have disappeared, and springs have been choked up or built over. The country suburb of one hundred years ago is the slum of to-day, crowded with squalid buildings and teeming with squalid life. Those pleasure-gardens nearest to the City itself were, naturally, the first to go. A genteel and pseudoaristocratic residential district now covers the site of |